With more than 200 NSW residential apartment buildings registered to have flammable cladding removed through Project Remediate, Engineering Education Australia (EEA) has partnered with the Office of the NSW Building Commissioner (OBC) to develop two courses on cladding remediation.

The online learning modules have just launched and will be delivered through Construct NSW.

Engineers Australia’s chief engineer Jane MacMaster says it was important for Engineers Australia to work with regulators to improve the standard of engineering practice in the country: “Regulators such as the OBC have well-established knowledge in the common risk areas of design and construction through audits and other enforcement activities.

“We appreciate this opportunity to jointly produce the training modules and upskill the profession … We’ll continue to explore opportunities such as joint training modules and webinars with regulators to help address common issues and bring lessons learned to our members.”

Construct NSW program manager Vanessa Carmody-Smith says the scale and gravity of the issue means it is important that engineers and others in the construction industry have access to the right resources.

“We’re very conscious that over the next three years, flammable cladding will be coming off residential buildings in much larger volumes and at a quicker rate than it has been previously,” she says.

“We really wanted to work with EEA to get these courses out, because it’s what’s needed right now. There are companies across NSW, Victoria and the rest of the country that need this information, and engineers especially will be at the forefront of dealing with remediating cladding.”

The first of the two-hour online courses, Cladding Remediation: Part A, introduces façades and cladding, how façades fail, prioritising defects and the recommended course of action to address such defects.

Its follow up course, Cladding Remediation: Part B, delves deeper into technical information, using real-life case studies to demonstrate how to address typical façade and cladding defects.

The cladding courses are the first of four training modules that will be produced by EEA and OBC this year.